Page 81 of The Traitor
Rather than start smashing porcelain, Michael took his flask out again and recalled too late the thing was empty. “Are you sending me away for safekeeping, or because you no longer trust me?”
“Why did you keep Anduvoir’s presence to yourself? I can understand you were not sure it was he and you did not want to believe it could be he, and yet my baroness can be used against me in a manner my aunt’s companion could not.”
“You have never once erred in your ability to identify and deal with an enemy, St. Clair, but you have far less experience with allies. I’ll not go North until the duel with MacHugh is resolved, if even then.”
The baroness, looking fetching in pale green edged with violet, was leading Baumgartner back toward the terrace. Michael pretended to watch that cheery tableau while the baron scrutinized him.
“If you in any way bring harm to my wife, Michael, I will kill you without a thought. This is a solemn promise. You may pass that along to whoever may find it of interest, for I’d hope they are protective of you as well.”
Michael made no reply, for to protest would be to lie to a man who’d saved his life more than once, and to acknowledge the comment would admit that Michael’s loyalty did not lie exclusively with his employer.
Fourteen
“You did not appear in charity with Mr. Brodie.”
Sebastian considered prevaricating. Milly was not an experienced rider, and managing her horse meant she could not quite as easily manage her husband.
“I am not in charity with my aunt,” he replied. “She sent not one spy, but two, the very day after you and I spoke our vows. Did she think we’d not manage our own wedding night?”
Milly fiddled with her mare’s mane. He’d put her up on Folly, a lovely little chestnut Arabian whose smooth gaits made up for a lamentable tendency to flirt with even mature geldings.
“Your aunt is in the habit of worrying about you, Sebastian. She’ll not stop merely because a wife has stumbled into your path.”
“No, she must add you to her list of people she worries about. May I assume the professor interrogated you?”
He bent forward to duck under a low-hanging branch. Because the mare and the woman were both smaller than their male counterparts, Milly did not have to duck.
“The professor was charming. He got his answers without asking any difficult questions. Did you know he once proposed to your aunt?”
Answers to which questions? “I did not. How did you pry that out of him?”
The mare made a feint at nipping Fable’s shoulder. “Bad girl,” Milly chided. “I asked him. I asked if, now that I have taken over the job of lady-most-concerned-with-your-welfare, would Lady Freddy allow somebody to acquire the same post with regard to her?”
Fable, poor lad, was not oblivious to the mare’s overtures, but danced off a few paces, looking more confused than annoyed.
Sebastian petted his gelding. “And his reply?”
“He regarded himself as already assigned to that post, happily so, but awaited the lady’s realization of it. They love you, Sebastian, and I think you hardly realize it.”
The horses settled, while Sebastian’s thoughts did not.
“I know they love me. Aunt’s steadfastness was sometimes all that sustained me when I was in France. She found ways to get letters through, news of home, the occasional small frippery or memento. My debt to her is substantial.”
For the first time, riding along with his wife at his side, Sebastian also admitted—to himself—that his debt to Lady Freddy was infernally tiresome.
Haveyoueverwonderedwhatitwouldbeliketohavepeace?
“She owes you too,” Milly said, drawing back on the reins when Folly would have made another try for Fable’s attention. “Your aunt is one of those ladies for whom an embroidery hoop is a type of shackle. She must be managing things, involved in larger affairs, and challenged by matters beyond petty gossip and fashion. If she were a vicar’s wife, she’d be running the parish. If she were a man, she would have bought her colors.”
“This puts her in my debt?”
“Your exile in France allowed her to manage the barony, gave her a challenge at a time in life when becoming a widow might have made her desperate and stupid. Lady Freddy likely understands this and feels indebted to you accordingly. Another nephew would have seen his affairs in the hands of anybody else rather than let an aging female make the important decisions.”
His affairs had been in the hands of trustees when he’d come of age in France, but Freddy had guided those trustees, as best Sebastian could ascertain.
“I have never once, not in my mind, not in any language, applied the wordexileto the time I spent in my mother’s homeland.”
“I hardly see why not. If you’d been a duke’s son, you can bet somebody would have negotiated for your return. Frenchmen were stranded here, too, and the French are surpassingly practical.”
